YOH, if there's one thing we South Africans like to do at elections it's to talk about race. It's inevitable really, when every analysis of what's whatting includes something regarding racial demographics. Most relevant to my experience of race-related chit-chats is what's said about white privilege, and particularly about white liberals, and you better hope you're not one of those, or if you are, bless: you must just write a blog where you can be as polemical as all the other white liberals and drown out their squealing with your own...
May the polemic begin!!
In 2004, I gave up on white guilt. For the first time in my life I built a meaningful friendship with a black man my own age who described himself as poor. Sure, I'd had a ton of black friends before this, even one or two black romances, but I'd never really spent much time with someone who didn't roll in the same socio-economic circles as me. And now I did. And in that contrast, suddenly I seemed very white, and very rich in comparison. My teenage mind could hardly compute this all. I'd gone from thinking race was totes not a thing because the black people I hung out with had the same clothes and phones and house as me. 'Poor Black People' had always seemed to me to be someones who existed as a stereotype Out There. Now suddenly, I was chilling out with a dude who took public transport (say whaaat?!), who didn't have a toilet in his house (I was confused more than anything else; surely a toilet is just part and parcel of a house?) and who didn't have money to do things like go to the Spur and roam around Cavendish with the rest of us cool kids.
My teeny-bopper self shifted.
I realised that there was a difference between the resources that black and white people historically had access to in this country, and still do. My immediate response was to feel guilty. Huge HUGE guilt. It was my people who had made it this way. My grandparents and great-grandparents and their parents and parents. Somehow I had done this to my friend. I felt terrible. And I was angry. How could my family have let this happen? Why didn't they do something to stop it? Why did all my white neighbours just retreat into their Victorian homes with the big Oak trees in the front garden for all those years and not do anything? Anger and guilt cycled and cycled.
Now, human relationships don't exist in odd little vacuums, at least those that go beneath superficial engagement don't, so these feelings seeped into my friendship. I wanted to apologise, to repent, to halt the resentment. And then I realised that my friend didn't want my apologies, that he didn't resent me. I'm paraphrasing here, because the letter he wrote me is tucked away safe in my little wooden box of treasures at home, but he told me to get over this white guilt of mine. He told me that I didn't make him poor, and that it wasn't helping our friendship that I treated him like the victim of my crime. That I needed to get over myself.
And BOOM, my teeny-bopper self shifted again.
I'd indulged in my own self-pity really, for far too long. I don't think I ever told him how grateful I was that he wrote me that letter and that he gave me a second chance. It's not that I felt that I was absolved now, that this one man had cleansed me of my sins, it's just that I realised that those feelings weren't helpful. They weren't helpful to me, and they certainly weren't helpful in my relationship with him. If I was going to move on, if we were going to move on, I needed to leave the guilt behind.
But there was still something though. The sense of injustice didn't disappear. I didn't cause the barriers that blocked him from success in his life, but I was and I continue to be part of a system that benefits from those barriers. I imagine an athletic track, with two lanes. In one lane I crouch, ready and waiting to launch into my sprint, and in the other lane crouches my friend. We've trained for this race, worked tirelessly. Had that thick burning feeling in our throats when you go for an early morning run in the cold. So we're standing there, in our two lanes. Except in his lane, someone, not me, but someone has put up hurdles. The gun signals the start of the race and off we go. We're sprinting, and sprinting. Every few seconds his pace adjust to jump over the hurdles, whereas me, I just run. By the first corner I have a slight lead, by the end of the race, I win hands-down. I didn't put his hurdles there, but I benefited from them.
And that's how I figured out what white privilege is. Now, obviously both privilege and unprivilege are intersectional: gender, ablebodiedness, language, class, whatevs, all count as hurdles and not. But that's a chat for another time. My point is just, or rather my question is just: what the hell do you do when you realise that you're winning not only because you trained hard, but also because they are hurdles in the other person's track? There's this issue related to affirmative action in university applications, about how some black students feel like because of race-based admisssions policies people will always wonder whether it was their skin colour or their ability that got them there. Honestly, white students should be asking themselves the same question: was it their training/ability or their skin colour/lack of hurdles that got them there? But to link to my question posed above, I don't think questioning is enough really. I believe that you need to work actively to remove the hurdles from the other person's lane, in whichever which way you can, including voting in ways which may benefit them, and not you. Otherwise your race is not a just one.
And this is where it all ties back to elections. As a holder of white privilege, I believe that I need to vote in such a way that does not support my privilege. I need to make an active decision to stay away from parties that I believe support the structures in which white privilege can continue to be nurtured. And here's the important bit: me, as an individual, gets to choose the party that I think best fits that description. Whether it's about land redistribution, or service-delivery, or youth wage subsidies: I need to weigh it all up in my head and figure out what I think is the best way to move the hurdles. My intention needs to be to achieve justice, and my intention needs to be matched with research and critical thought.
Look, I don't give a shit who someone votes for, I give a shit about why. If they believe that the ANC is the best way to achieve justice, then VIVA your vote. If someone else believes that the DA does the same, then VIVA that. There is always going to be dissension when it comes to the relative merits and faults of each party so I'm not going to get all heated up if someone comes to a different conclusion to me about which party it is that's best placed to achieve social justice. I'm going to get heated up if people vote to protect their own privilege.
And blah blah I know all the critiques against virtue ethics and how intention means nadda in comparison to action and usually I'd agree. But honestly, in a country like ours where so much is fuelled by what people believe and what they hope for, and what they dream about achieving, having good intentions is not totally worthless. Ours is a country of aspiration, and I care about what people aspire to achieve. And I believe that if we share a set of aspirations, then those freaking hurdles will be that much easier to move.
No comments:
Post a Comment